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The Next Clean Energy Revolution

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The Next Clean Energy Revolution YALE LAW & POLICY REVIEW Clean Food: The Next Clean Energy Revolution Jonathan Lovvorn* The world is in the throes of a clean energy revolution. This revolution has led to the ongoing demise of coal, and a shift towards clean and efficient energy sources like wind and solar. Despite these advances, the process of producingfood for hu- man energy remains extraordinarily dirty and inefficient. This Essay explores what it would look like to graft clean energy policy onto the human food system. It discusses what is wrong with the standards by which we currently evaluate food policy and how we might apply a clean human energy or "clean food" standard instead. It concludes that building a clean food grid should be the next clean ener- gy revolution. INTRODUCTION Locating and consuming energy is a fundamental priority for every living organism. Even autotrophs must have access to light, organic nutrients, or oth- er elements in order to carry out the biological miracle of creating their own food.' Energy is the key ingredient that makes everything and everyone function in the world. Over the last decade, the process of manufacturing and using me- * Visiting Lecturer on Law, Yale Law School; Lecturer on Law & Policy Director, Harvard Law School Animal Law & Policy Program; Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center; Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Univer- sity Law School. J.D. University of California, Hastings College of the Law; LL.M. Environmental Law, Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College. @ 2017, Jonathan Lovvorn. The author wishes to thank Bowen Chang and Cortney Ahern for their excellent research assistance, without which this Essay would not have been possible. Mathew Hayek, Yusef Al-Jarani, Peter Beck, Will Becker, To- ny Binder, Nancy Perry, Declianna Winders, Katherine Barnekow, Tara Lewis, Viveca Morris, Elan Abrell, Ralph Henry, Jennifer Fearing, and Margie Robinson also provided significant review and assistance. Professor Douglas Kysar gener- ously provided valuable insights and encouragement. The views expressed herein are strictly those of the author, as are any errors. 1. See Jonathan R. Leake, Duncan D. Cameron & David J. Beerling, Fungal Fidelity in the Myco-Heterotroph-to-Autotroph Life Cycle of Lycopodiaceae: A Case of Paren- tal Nurture?, 177 NEW PHYTOLOGIST 572-76 (2008). 283 YALE LAW& POLICY REVIEW 36: 283 2018 chanical energy has been in the throes of a massive revolution.' Today, mechan- ical energy is judged by two primary criteria: cleanliness and efficiency.3 When policymakers talk about clean energy, they mean far more than "sanitary"- looking instead at the full range of environmental externalities associated with harnessing, processing, and transporting various energy sources. 4 When they talk about energy efficiency, the key question is the relative rate of loss or waste as one form of energy is converted to another-like burning coal to create elec- tricity.' Thus, a particular energy system can be both clean and efficient (wind turbines), clean but inefficient (outdated solar panels), dirty but efficient (frack- ing), or dirty and inefficient (internal combustion engines). This new focus on clean and efficient energy has led to the ongoing demise of coal,6 and the rapid expansion of clean and efficient new energy sources like wind and solar.' 2. See Varun Sivaram & Teryn Norris, The Clean Energy Revolution: FightingClimate Change With Innovation, FOREIGN AFF. (Apr. 18, 2016), http://www.foreignaffairs .com/articles/united-states/2016-04-18/clean-energy-revolution [http://perma .cc/J53H-QJGD]; Allison Lantero, Meet the Women Leading the Clean Energy Rev- olution, U.S. DEP'T ENERGY (May 2016), http://www.energy.gov/articles/meet- women-leading-clean-energy-revolution [http://perma.cclG5AQ-EUJ9]. 3. See Energy PartnersLaunch 'Clean and Efficient Energy Program'for Public Power, ALL. TO SAvE ENERGY (Feb. 23, 2009), http://www.ase.org/news/energy-partners -launch-clean-and-efficient-energy-program-public-power [http://perma.cc/ P3AZ-4VPB]; Horizon 2020, Secure, Clean and Efficient Energy, EUR. COMM'N (2013), http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon202O/en/h2020-section/secure- clean-and-efficient-energy [http://perma.cc/4KQW-9DRE]; Affordable Access to Clean and Efficient Energy: Final Working Group Report, MASS. DEP'T OF ENERGY RES. & DEP'T OF Hous. &CMTY. DEV. & MASS. CLEAN ENERGY CTR., (Mar. 4, 2017), http://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2017/09/12/aacee-report.pdf [http://perma.cc/2TLY-PAAQ]. 4. See, e.g., Dora E. L6pez, Joseph C. Mullins & David A. Bruce, Energy Life Cycle As- sessment for the Production of Biodiesel from Rendered Lipids in the United States, 49 INDUS. ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY RES. 2419 (2010). 5. Yuan Xu, Chi-Jen Yang & Xiaowei Xuan, Engineeringand OptimizationApproach- es to Enhance the Thermal Efficiency of Coal Electricity Generation in China, 60 ENERGY POL'Y 356 (2013). 6. See THOMAS PRINCEN, JACK P. MANNO & PAMELA L. MARTIN, ENDING THE FOSSIL FUEL ERA (2015); Karen Heller, Coal No Longer Fuels America. But the Legacy- and the Myth-Remain, WASH. POST (July 9, 2017), http://www.washingtonpost .com/1ifestyle/style/coal-no-longer-fuels-america-but-the-legacy--and-the-myth-- remain/2017/07/07/d8a8bcb4-582b-11e7-b38e-35fd8e0c288fstory.html [http:// perma.cc/ZWE2-NMVM]. 7. See BEN BACKWELL, WIND POWER: THE STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL OF A NEW GLOBAL INDUSTRY (2015); Ernest Moniz, A Clean Energy Revolution-Now, U.S. DEP'T ENERGY (Sept. 19, 2013), http://www.energy.gov/articles/clean-energy -revolution-now [http://perma.cc/UP45-5M7G]. 284 CLEAN FOOD Clean human energy or "clean food"' is the last frontier of the clean energy revolution. The current food system is extraordinarily dirty and inexcusably in- efficient.9 Yet, the two key criteria for judging mechanical energy in policy cir- cles-cleanliness and efficiency-are rarely applied to human energy sources. This is unusual, as food is, at its core, nothing more than biological energy. In a world headed for more than nine billion mouths to feed by 2050,0 the food sys- tem should be held to the same standards of cleanliness and efficiency as other energy sources. Those human energy sources that meet the clean and efficient mandate should flourish, and those that do not are likely to find themselves the "food coal" of the next decade. Despite its first order of importance to all human endeavors, the legal scholarly attention to the issue of food policy is shockingly lean. A quick survey of legal scholarship between 2000 and 2014 reveals more than 22,000 published works concerning free speech." By comparison, just 430 works concerning food policy were produced during this same time frame." Among those latter works, 8. The terms "clean" and "dirty" are sometimes used narrowly to describe the rela- tive level of sanitation or purity of food items. See, e.g., Andrew Wasley, 'Dirty Meat': Shocking Hygiene FailingsDiscovered in US Pig and Chicken Plants, GUARDIAN (Feb. 21, 2018), http://www.theguardian.com/animals-farmed/2018/ feb/21/dirty-meat-shocking-hygiene-failings-discovered-in-us-pig-and-chicken- plants [http://perma.cc/5AX4-YNTB]. The construction of "clean food" discussed herein is intended to be much broader, and serve as a policy analog to "clean en- ergy. 9. See Gregory A Keoleian & Martin C. Heller, Greenhouse Gas Emission Estimates of U.S. Dietary Choices and Food Loss, 19 J. INDUS. ECOLOGY 391, 391 (2015) ("Glob- ally, direct emissions from agriculture represent 10% to 12% of overall green- house gas (GHG) emissions; when including the impact of fertilizer and chemical production, fuel use, and agriculturally induced land-use change (which carries large uncertainty), the figure rises to 17% to 32%."); Peter Alexander et al., Losses, Inefficiencies and Waste in the Global Food System, 153 AGRIc. SYSTEMS 190, 193 (2017) ("Only 19.2-31.9%--less than a third-of biomass harvested from crops or grass is finally consumed by humans."). io. See Food & Agric. Org., The State of the World's Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture: Managing Systems at Risk, UNITED NATIONS (2011), http://www.fao.org/docrep/017/il688e/il688e.pdf [http://perma.cc/S98J-3C24]; Associated Press, UN: Farmers Must Produce 70% More Food by 2050 to Feed Population, GUARDIAN (Nov. 28, 2011), http://www.theguardian.com/ environment/201 1/nov/28/un-farmers-produce-food-population [http://perma .cc/6QSA-3G38] ("The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that farmers will have to produce 70% more food by 2050 to meet the needs of the world's expected 9-billion-strong population."). ni. See Hollis, HARv. UNIV., http://holis.harvard.edu/ [http://perma.cc/3RVK-MH98] (last visited Mar. 29, 2018) (searching for "free speech" in U.S. academic law journals 2000-2014). 12. See Baylen Linnekin & Emily Broad Leib, Food Law & Policy: The Fertile Field's Origins and FirstDecade, 2014 Wis. L. REv. 559, 597. 285 YALE LAW & POLICY REVIEW 36: 283 2018 precious few advocate for the codification of any kind of individual right to en- gage in humans' most basic biological function at either the state, federal, or in- ternational level.1 3 The United Nations has explored the development of a right to food, but to date nothing concrete has come of these explorations. 4 In keep- ing with the food-privileged status of the legal academy, it appears we spend in- finitely more time fretting over legal protections for what comes out of people's mouths than we do thinking about how to ensure there is something to go in. The purpose of this Essay is to explore what it would look like to graft the policy yardstick of modern mechanical energy cleanliness and efficiency onto the human energy system. What is wrong with the way we currently evaluate food policy? And what would it look like to apply a clean food standard instead? The thesis of this Essay is that by shifting the way we conceptualize food-and embracing a new clean and efficient human energy standard-we can more ob- jectively consider both old and new potential solutions to "power" the hun- dreds of millions of people who currently lack food security in the world," and better ensure ample human energy is available for the billions of new human energy consumers joining our ranks by 2050.
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